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Month: May 2017

Yesterday we started with a challenge to guess what was going on in two photos that were real news stories. We split up into two teams. One team got the answer and the other team tried to guess what the story was using only yes and no questions. Here are the photos:

Today’s conversation was about apps or applications that we all use on our phones and tablets. An app is a program or piece of software designed to fulfill a particular function. We talked about what apps we have and what we use them for. Then we listed some categories for apps, like communication, entertainment, education, travel, music and more, and what apps are related to the categories.

We talked about apps for looking for romance – Tinder, Bumble, and Plenty of Fish.

Then we watched this film about a guy using an app to find love. Is this the way to find love????

After watching we described the guy in the film and speculated on if he would find love or not. We discussed whether or not these apps were replacing finding love in person, and whether or not these apps make finding a romantic partner less romantic. We also talked about apps as a community, and can apps tells us about someone’s personality or lifestyle.

Lastly we watched this talk about Litterati , which is an app for cleaning up trash in neighborhoods all over.

The developer, Jeff Kirschner, describes his philosophy about why he designed the app and how it works. Take a look here:

We agreed this was a pretty good idea and clever way to clean up the planet!

Today we reviewed binomial pairs which are expressions containing two words which are joined by a conjunction, usually and or or. Some examples are – soap and water, hot and cold, burger and fries, win or lose, now or never and now or later. Take a look at the review of binomial pairs we did together. To look up some of the meanings just go to The Free Dictionary online resource.

Next we had some fun with a card matching game with binomials.

Today’s conversation was about binomial pairs and relationships – like husband and wife, mother and daughter/son/children, teacher and student/pupil, doctor and patient, and brother and sister. Our focus was on father and son. We took some time to describe the relationship between father and son, using lots of different adjectives, both positive, negative and neutral.

Then we listened to the audio of the film “Jordan and Norvin” which is about the relationship between a father and son. We talked about the dialogue between father and son and what images we might see in the film. Great job on describing the images in the film – very creative and imaginative. Take a look at the short film here:

After watching we described the relationship between father and son and agreed that the images were well suited to the script. Then we talked about the differences between the relationships of fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, and mothers and daughters and mothers and sons. But, how do mothers describe themselves? How do kids describe their mothers? After discussing these two questions we watched this film to see how mothers described themselves and how their kids described their mothers. Take a look here:

We talked about how the mothers and kids had such different views and the fact that all the kids were young and so their descriptions were sort of expected. The mothers generally were kind of hard on themselves and sometimes you just need to get a new perspective to change your situation. Life can be difficult and challenging , so it helps to have a different perspective.

We looked at some verbs that go with choice – make, face, be faced with, offer, give, have no, and have little.

Next we discussed our personal choices that we make daily and some other life choices we’ve made. We may not realize it but we make lots of choices everyday throughout our lives. We talked about what type of choice maker we are – do we make choices quickly or do we take our time and think about our choices before making them. Making choices can be difficult when there is too much to choose from like at a store

or picking an item from a menu at a restaurant

Then in pairs we asked each other some random this or that type choice options. It was a fun way to get to know each other through our choices!

We listened to a poem called “Choice” and after listening talked about the words in the poem and what it meant. Then we watched this video which goes with the poem “Choice”

Watch the video with the transcript of the poem, and you will see that the message of the film is that the writer of the poem has chosen to ask his girlfriend to marry him and she has accepted. We looked at the use of “choice” and “choose” in the poem and the ways choice is described.

Thanks for your participation and contribution to today’s conversation!